Guess where we are going on our holiday.....

We found a Holiday swap, we are going to Vienna (Austria), we are really looking forward to our trip to this beautiful city and country, there will be lots to see and do, can't wait to visit the Hundertwasser house and see Klimt paintings and of course enjoy the nature. If you have any tips what to see or do I would love to hear from you.

I visited Austria with my family when I was the same age as Mila and my mum bought some lovely traditional fabrics and made me a Dirndl, it was my favourite dress for a long time, luckily my mum still had it and now it's just the right size for Mila. My mum also bought a Dirndl for my sister and so Sofia and Mila already know what they will pack for their holiday.

Indian dance lesson

I just want to share with you a little film of Sofia's birthday party of the Indian-dance lesson they had during the party.

Kleinformat

Look what the postman brought me today, the brand new magazine Kleinformat!! This is a new magazine in the german language about indie designers, mothers, children design and much more.....it's like a blog on paper, just the right size to fit in your bag. The magazine contains articles about childrens swimwear, shopping tips in Amsterdam and also our Roulotte. It's great to see it print! What I love about Kleinformat is the little extra's, the outside are stickers, it comes with a sheet of sweet wrapping paper and the middle of the magazine is specially made for children, with colouring pages and a boat of Jurianne matter to fold. Dolores, the maker of kleinformat, has put a lot of love in the magazine and it shows! I just read on her blog that the magazine is already sold out in her shop but you can find a list of (web)shops on her blog where they sell the magazine.

Progress???

So this is the situation right now, at the left you see the old work-room becoming our new bedroom ( with the new duvet covers I made for the girls) and at the right the old room of Sofia and Mila becoming my new workroom. I have moved in two desks and a lot of my stuff but as you see there is still a lot to do...

reason for my non-blogging

Not such a pretty picture, but this will be my new workroom/atelier,it's the old room of Sofia and Mila, we first thought to have it as our bedroom but after a few weeks sleeping there it just didn't feel right we decided to create some more work and change rooms, so my old workroom/his study will be our new bedroom plus desk for the computer, Sofia and mila have our old bedroom and their old bedroom becomes my new workroom. This is all very nice and I'm very happy to have my own room, it creates a lot of work. I've been so busy stripping wall paper and painting but hope to have some more time next week to start moving stuff and creating nice little corners to take pretty pictures and show it to you.....

9 years today!!

Today is Sofia's real birthday, a nice ( rainy) calm day, breakfast with presents, cupcakes for her classmates and tonight Indian dinner with the grandparents and of course cake.

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thank you all for all those lovely comments on the Indian party and birthday wishes!!

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Sofia's Indian party #4

Here are some pictures of the party decoration, most of the decoration we had already or came from secondhand, were borrowed or handmade, that is a easy way to keep your party to a low budget. A big thanks to my sweet friend Myra who let me borrow some of her lovely souvenirs she collected on her trip to India and made that great picture!

Sofia's Indian party 3#

No party is complete without food, so we needed Indian party-food. I made an Indian buffet together with a little help from a friend and my sister, the kids used banana-leaves as plates. We ended the meal with some birthday cakes, Sofia asked me to make a carrot cake ( instead of the photo-cake from last year that she liked to look at but did not like the taste, she prefers my homemade cakes!!!!) and a chocolate cake, the challenge was to make these cakes look like they just came from India. I ordered some bling-bling online, added some bright colours and some Indian motifs and I'm quite pleased with the result.

Sofia's Indian party # 2

Saturday morning before the Indian dance party started I decorated the hands and feet of Sofia and Mila with Henna.

Sofia's Indian party # 1

The party is over and I must say we had a great day, we where so lucky that the weather was so lovely and sunny and that the girls could do the dance-class in the garden as I planned. The dance teacher was amazing, she teached the girls a quite complicated beautiful dance and for about 1 and a half hour ( with two limonade breaks). The girls where really serious and concentrated and later on the evening they gave 3 !!! dance performances for the parents. I made Sari skirts for each of the girls and we gave them some bracelets and bindi to look like real Indian dancers.

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Thanks to Jaap for taking such great pictures of the girls!!
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Let the party begin.....or not just yet!

Tomorrow is Sofia's Indian birthday party and I'm busy cooking and baking but wanted to share with you some of the preparations.We finally made the invitation inspired by the Goddess Lakshmi sitting in a lotus flower with lotus flowers in her hand ( thanks Mila!!). We are looking forward to tomorrow, there will be lots of music, food, dance and colour. I made 9 sari-skirts and there will be a real Indian dance teacher to teach them a dance on this song. Hope you will return sunday or monday when I'll share pictures of the party.